How a high-stakes game may affect your heart

Stressful events — even positive ones, such as watching an exciting sporting match — can affect your heart. During World Cup soccer and the National Football League’s Super Bowl, rates of heart attacks and heart rhythm problems (arrhythmias) increase, both among sports fans and within the local population. A study published online August 20 by the American Journal of Cardiology takes a closer look at this risk.

Researchers examined data from 133 people with implanted cardiac devices in St. Louis, Mo., during two 10-day periods. The first was in early September of 2011 (the control period). The second was six weeks later during the World Series, when the St. Louis Cardinals played a series of dramatic games against the Texas Rangers.

During the baseball playoffs, the devices detected nearly twice as many arrhythmias than during the control period. Spikes in adrenaline, a hormone that increases heart rate, probably explain the differences. But the arrhythmias were nearly all harmless; only one person required a device-delivered shock to restore the heart’s regular rhythm. Future research may clarify the timing of arrhythmias with regard to major sporting events, as well as in people without implanted cardiac devices.

1 Corinthians 3:1-2 And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able

,1 Corinthians 13:11 When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.

1 Corinthians 14:20 Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature.

Psalm 65:9 You visit the earth and cause it to overflow; You greatly enrich it; The stream of God is full of water; You prepare their grain, for thus You prepare the earth.

2 Thessalonians 1:3 We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brethren, as is only fitting, because your faith is greatly enlarged, and the love of each one of you toward one another grows ever greater;

Proverbs 1:5 A wise man will hear and increase in learning, And a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel,

Acts 12:24 But the word of the Lord continued to grow and to be multiplied.

Proverbs 11:24 There is one who scatters, and yet increases all the more, And there is one who withholds what is justly due, and yet it results only in want.

Ezekiel 8:6 And He said to me, “Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations which the house of Israel are committing here, so that I would be far from My sanctuary? But yet you will see still greater abominations.”

Ephesians 4:16 from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

2 Chronicles 7:16 “For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that My name may be there forever, and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually.

2 Corinthians 9:10 Now He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness;